Genesis 32:22-32
The Prevailing Limp
It was the middle of the night when Jacob awoke, nervous, even petrified of his meeting with Esau the next day. He had heard that Esau had already sent 400 men to search for Jacob, the younger brother who had stolen his birthright and his blessing. Jacob, by far the weaker of the two brothers in numbers and power, divided his men into two companies, hoping that at least one section of his followers would survive.
220 goats. 220 sheep. More than 30 camels. A total of 50 cows and bulls. 30 donkeys. 550 animals. These were the gifts Jacob sent to Esau in good faith and to ask for forgiveness And all those animals, 550 of them, were but a portion of Jacob’s assets. The rest of his flocks and herds, he also sent ahead of him with his family across the Jabbok River. Jacob was to follow later after them.
And now Jacob, the husband of four wives and the father of a baker’s dozen of children, was all alone. His solitude must have been deafeningly quiet. Jacob had been used to hearing thousands of animals during his 20 years overseeing Laban’s flocks and herds. Now the baaing of sheep was gone. The mooing of cows was gone. The naying was gone. The braying was gone. The sounds of his four wives were gone. The chatter and cries of his 13 children were gone. Jacob was utterly alone.
And in this solitude, in this loneliness, in the depth of darkness when fear is found even in the faintest of footsteps, Jacob is attacked. Blindsided perhaps, by a figure that is both man and God. The same God of Adam and Eve who walked in the garden of Eden. The God of Abraham and Sarah who foretold of Sarah’s pregnancy by personally appearing with two men at the door of Abraham’s tent. This God who physically walks and talks to people—wrestles with Jacob, the father of Israel’s twelve tribes all night long. Jacob strives and struggles with God’s own self in the form of a man, through the darkness of the desert sky lit by diamonds of stars.
But the man, the God, could not prevail against Jacob, so he struck Jacob on the leg, injuring his muscle and joint, perhaps permanently. Still Jacob would not let the figure go, not until he was given a blessing. So Jacob receives a rightful blessing this time. A blessing that has not been stolen, not like the first blessing he stole from his brother Esau and his father Isaac. But a blessing that has been earned by wrestling, striving, struggling with God and with humanity. Jacob also receives a new name—Israel he will be called. Israel—which means “God strives.” For Jacob strove with God and with humans and prevailed.
In memory of this night of struggle with God and with humans, Jacob names the place Peniel, meaning “face of God” because Jacob saw the face of God and survived with his life, his soul, his very self intact. However, the remembrance of this event is not just found in the name Peniel, but is constantly with Jacob in the limp he carries with him as hobbles away the next morning to meet his brother and his foe Esau, who will greet Jacob not with war, but with peace, hugging Jacob and reconciling with his only brother. Forgiveness and the ways of peace are found among Jacob and Esau and Jacob’s long night of loneliness is over.
The passage we are going through today may not be an easy one for all of us grasp. Struggling with God is never an easy encounter. And even though in our Reformed tradition we view God as a God of comfort and grace and love, there are also aspects of our tradition that recognize how difficult it is at times to discern God’s will for our lives and to live lives that are holy, just and merciful. Jacob seems to be going through a very similar experience in our passage today.
And this struggling with God is not something that only we Christians go through. Jews and Muslims, like us are part of the Abrahamic traditions and share this story of Jacob struggling at Peniel with us. And just as we do, Jews and Muslims draw from these biblical stories inspiration for their own lives and comfort in the midst of their struggles. And there is a concept in Islamic thought which seems to really relate with our passage today. It is called jihad.
Now I know this is word that has been extremely politicized in the past decade, but in its essence jihad merely means “to struggle” or “to strive.” And while jihad certainly can be applied to a type of religious and political warfare, its meaning is so much broader than that. It is about “struggling in the way of God.” It is about how individuals and communities, struggle to exert themselves to realize God’s will, to lead virtuous lives, and to extend faith through preaching, education, and so on.”
It has been referred to as an internal jihad and includes reconciling with others, learning holy scriptures, overcoming hatred, greed, pride, malice, working for social justice, doing good for other people, finding a way to live peacefully with those around you. As scholar Reuven Firestone put it, while there is the struggle of the sword, there are also three other categories of struggle which are more daily practiced and more meaningful to many Muslims—the struggle within one’s own self, the struggle of our hearts and struggle of our hands.
In others words what we think with our heads, what we do with our hands, and what we feel in our hearts are part of living with God and living with each other and are part of the greater struggle that we frequently engage in. Do the words of Jesus not echo these same sentiments? Love your God and your neighbor and treat them both as you would treat yourself. Anyone who thinks about sin has indeed committed sin in their own hearts. Many of the words of Jesus reverberate around the internal struggles of how to live in harmony with God and with each other.
And does our passage today of Jacob wrestling with God, not also exhibit some of the same struggles, the same strivings with both God and our fellow humans? Jacob had been on the run from Laban and had just settled peacefully with him. And now immediately following his tumultuous relationship with Laban, Jacob is preparing to meet Esau for the first time in over 20 years, not knowing if his brother is still fuming from the theft of his birthright and blessing years before. Jacob is in the midst of an internal battle with God about how to deal with his brother Esau. Will there be a fight? Will there be bloodshed? Will things turn out peacefully? What should Jacob do?
While Jacob does not receive a direct answer to this question from his physical encounter with God, the God-figure does give Jacob something greater than a simple answer: Jacob is blessed and is assured that he “has prevailed” in his striving with God and with humans.
“For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been preserved.” These words of relief are spoken by Jacob after his night-long struggle. But saying only Jacob’s “life” was preserved does not allow us to see the whole picture. The Hebrew word translated as “life” here (vi(p.n:) also means soul, self, person, appetite, desire, emotion. It is not just connected to the living and breathing self, but to the essence of the person that makes that person who they are.
For the Hebrews, the soul and the body were not seen as two separate entities but were bound together. Struggles that affect the body also affect the soul. And struggles that affect the soul also affect the body.
But what does it mean to prevail and to retain one’s life/soul/self in a struggle with God? And is it possible, like Jacob, to prevail in our struggles with a limp? Can we prevail with a limp? Put another way, can any struggle we have leave us perfectly whole, perfectly knowledgeable, perfectly victorious? Or does part of prevailing in our lives and in our struggles mean finding out our own weaknesses, our limps?
Just as important, is that Jacob walks away from his struggles with God with the knowledge that God is committed to struggling with humans. God does not struggle “against” Jacob, but “with” Jacob. God’s will is not to destroy humanity but to help humanity prevail, to struggle “with” us, to show us where our limps are and to help us prevail through them. Indeed our struggles with God are not struggles with an enemy who wants to destroy us, but with a friend who desires to struggle with us in our times of hardship and despair.
We struggle with death. We struggle with disease and sickness. We struggle when we lose a friend, or husband or wife. We struggle with high prices and low wages. We struggle with war and violence. We struggle with hunger, emotional and psychological pain, separation from families and friends, loneliness, fights, break-ups—and these times of turmoil and struggle in our lives are times when, like Jacob, we see God face-to-face and struggle through the darkest of nights.
And after struggling through nights of tumultuous darkness with God and with each other, we do not come out perfect beings. In fact, we come out limping. But these limps are not signs of defeat but are reminders that prevailing in struggles is not about mere dominance over other people or over God. Prevailing in our lives of faith is about knowing that we have a God who does not struggle “against” but “with” us—a God who is there for us in our darkest of nights wrestling with us and show us to how live our lives after our struggles, and how to prevail with the limps that we have. Amen.
Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad -- July 31, 2008
